Name Your Price
by no more lies
Summary: Can love be bought? Seto Kaiba certainly believes so as he uses blackmail, threats, and other underhand tricks to seek revenge, and ultimately the affection of one girl.
1. A Rude Awakening

Author's Note: Not much to say, I'll let the story speak for itself. It may take a couple of chapters to develop, so stay tuned!

**Chapter 1: A Rude Awakening**

Heavy droplets of rain fell hard and fast over Domino High school. A thunderstorm was in the midst, causing students to run hurriedly into the building in an attempt to avoid the inevitable droplets. Large puddles that promised to flood by mid-afternoon formed on the street before the school.

As the rain poured down, a small group of students attempted to wade through the water to reach campus. In an almost victorious attempt, but before they were finally able to make it across the street safely, a white stretch limo turned the corner and headed towards them at lightning speed. It made no effort to slow down as it neared the group of students, causing the crowd to scramble in all different directions. However, one misfortunate soul slipped and fell into a large pool of water in an attempt to escape the oncoming vehicle, which finally screeched to a halt at the last possible second directly in front of the school building, and inches away from the body.

Out stepped Seto Kaiba, briefcase in hand, with no regard to the figure sitting in the puddle, who was now completely drenched in water. Yugi Moto sat in the frigid rain, completely amazed at the fact he was still alive. The limo was seconds away from running him over, and he remained in the ice cold puddle, unable to move from absolute shock. The crowd had reassembled around Yugi, as certain individuals moved to help him get back up and make sure he was alright.

"You're not hurt, are you?" asked a young girl with brown, almond shaped eyes.

She offered Yugi a look of apprehension, to which he blushed and sheepishly replied, "Yeah, I'm fine. Everything's fine." Hoping to reassure her, Yugi was surprised to see the girl's face turn suddenly from concern to anger.

"No, everything is not fine. That jerk owes you an apology."

To this, Yugi blushed furthermore.

"No, no, no! It's okay. I'm fine, really. It was just an accident," Yugi protested.

Realizing that no physical damage had been done to Yugi, the rest of the group began making way towards the school building once more, with Yugi trailing in the back. The girl with the almond eyes, however, didn't move. Yugi paused and gave her a nervous glance.

"Aren't you coming?" he asked, wondering why she was still standing in the middle of the street. The young girl kept her glare at the limo driver who was now beginning to pull out onto the main road once more. She finally stopped staring when he turned at the street corner.

"That wasn't very nice," the girl said, as she finally walked from the middle of the street.

"Yeah, well… Kaiba's not a really nice guy," Yugi answered, as he followed her into the school. Large crowds amassed in the hallways as students grudgingly assembled at their lockers, putting up and taking out books they would need for the day.

Upon entering, the girl's eyes immediately landed on the tall, ominous figure of Seto Kaiba.

He was at his locker, dispensing books one by one from his briefcase, stopping occasionally to put another one back in. He seemed intent on his task of figuring out which books he would need for the day and which ones he could leave behind. The girl wasted no time as she made a straight beeline towards Kaiba. Before Yugi could stop her or even realize what she was doing, the girl was inches from away from Kaiba's face. Kaiba continued to unload his books, looking straight ahead of him, completely ignoring the fact someone was standing next to him, intently staring him down.

"Move," he finally said in a firm and commanding voice, as he shut his locker door.

"I think you owe someone an apology," the girl replied in an equally imposing voice, not budging an inch. Kaiba now turned his body towards her and took a step to tighten the already constricted gap between their bodies. He was quite a bit taller, causing him to loom threateningly over her small body when he said:

"Move. Or I'll make you move."

"You owe someone an apology, and I'm not moving an inch until you do it."

Kaiba scoffed at the girl's foolish audacity. "I owe no one an apology, and the only person who should be offering apologies here is you, for wasting my time."

At those words, the girl's brown eyes lit up with fury. "Who the hell do you think you are?" she cried out with disgust. "You almost ran over someone today and you don't seem to show the least bit of concern for your actions! What kind of human being are you?"

With this, Kaiba's own rage began to escalate. This girl was really stepping on his toes. "I think you should be nearly thanking me," Kaiba replied in a cold and threatening tone. "Another useless human being eliminated from this overpopulated earth is actually a good thing, and if I recall correctly, that little morsel of a human that was almost executed by my vehicle this morning is indeed a useless human being. I don't think I would have regretted it at all if his life form had been remo–"

Kaiba's words were interrupted by a sharp, painful slap to the face. His eyes suddenly narrowed with rage as he glared at the girl with detestation.

"Do you have any idea what you just did?" Kaiba said, in an alarmingly loud voice. The large crowd that formed around the two during their argument suddenly went completely silent. No one had ever treated Seto Kaiba like that. No one.

"You are an arrogant, heartless asshole who deserved to be slapped into reality," the girl replied in a stern and unwavering tone. "You have no right to call anyone a useless human being, and if anyone deserves to be eliminated from this world, it's you," the girl said, suddenly turning around and walking away.

"Stop right where you are, I'm not done with you!" Kaiba ordered, but it was useless. The girl walked right through the large crowd and disappeared from sight, leaving Kaiba in the center of the spectators, his cheek burning with pain that showed as a large red mark right across his face. In utter embarrassment, Kaiba's steel blue eyes glared at the crowd around him. "What are you staring at?!" he scowled, as the mobs immediately began to disperse. Kaiba was fuming. Never had he been so publicly humiliated in his entire life.

That girl was going to pay.


	2. Finders and Seekers

Author's Note: Here's the second chapter. I rewrote parts of chapter 1 and reuploaded it. There were some things that bothered me after rereading it. I write most of this at like, 5 a.m. in the morning because I can't sleep, so when I'm actually awake, I realize what I wrote is a bunch of nonsensical crap. Hope this chapter's not too bad, enjoy!

**Chapter 2: Finders and Seekers**

By lunchtime, word of the confrontation between Kaiba and the unknown girl had spread far and wide throughout campus. The story was slowly becoming distorted, and the slap had turned into a punch, to a kick, to a full blown fight involving knives, guns, and other miscellaneous weapons.

Kaiba heard whispers of the mutilated story as he walked from class to the cafeteria. He was trying to hold in the urge of yelling outloud that it was "just a slap." But admitting that even a slap was involved was much too embarrassing for him, as he stormed past the many whispering students to reach the lunchroom.

Yugi was not interested in lunch that day. Accompanied by his friends, Joey, Tristan and Tea, he was on a mission to find the girl and apologize for the predicament she was now in because she tried to defend him.

"So what did she look like?" Tristan asked, peering around the large cafeteria.

"Well, she had black hair, really black hair. And really long," Yugi muttered, trying to recall the image of the girl in his mind.

"Okay, that leaves about uh, half the girls in this room," Tea replied with a small sigh. "Can you be more descriptive?"

"She had these really sharp, brown eyes that just by looking at them, you knew exactly how she was feeling," Yugi added, as he recalled looking into those fervent eyes that morning.

"All right gang, let's split up and round up all the chicks with black hair and brown eyes," Joey said, clapping his hands together and rubbing them, as if ready to get into the action.

"Come on Yugi, couldn't you be a little more specific? Those descriptions sound really, really generic," Tea said, looking around the cafeteria once more.

"Well, honestly, I'm really not sure how to describe her," Yugi replied with distress. He wanted to depict her to his friends so that they could help him find her, but in truth, the girl was rather indescribable. Her features were delicate, but how would you really describe delicate? By looking at her, you would never have guessed she had the nerve to slap Seto Kaiba. But delicate was not a very descriptive adjective to offer his friends. Different eyes perceive "delicate" in different ways, and it would've been just as useless as telling them that she had two eyes and one nose. She also seemed to be a truly caring soul that obviously could not stand being pushed around or seeing others mistreated, but how was one to describe that physically?

"Oh yeah, she's sort of fair-skinned. Not too tall either, and um, doesn't look like the type that would ever slap anyone, especially Kaiba," Yugi said, trying to be as descriptive as possible of a person he couldn't really put into words.

"I think very few people on this earth look like they would slap Kaiba," Tea laughed while patting Yugi on the back. "So I guess we're looking for a rather generic looking girl with black hair, brown eyes and fair skin. Where to start?"

But she was wrong, Yugi thought. To him, the girl was anything but generic. If she were, he would have been able to describe her in a heartbeat. All he could recall was every time the girl looked at him, she utilized every inch of her face to express her feelings, distracting him from her real physical features. He had memorized her emotions, not her face.

"So is it her?" Joey asked, pointing to a random girl walking by who happened to have black hair. Yugi shook his head. One after the next, the pattern continued on for nearly ten minutes till all the dark haired females in the cafeteria were confirmed as not being the girl who stood up to Seto Kaiba that morning.

Suddenly, Yugi shuddered at the thought that something might have happened to her. Everyone went to the cafeteria during lunch, but why was she nowhere to be seen? If anything did happen to her, it was definitely all because of him. Did Kaiba find her? Did he already seek his revenge? Was she hurt? Looking around, he noticed something else was amiss: Kaiba was nowhere to be seen.


	3. Warning Signs

Author's Note: Thanks everyone for the feedback! It really does help to push me to keep writing.

**Chapter 3: Warning Signs**

The mid-afternoon sun was ambushed by dark, ominous clouds, but the rain halted momentarily as Seto Kaiba stepped outside of the school building and into the grassy courtyard. Deep puddles formed in the dying grass that surrounded the sidewalks, making everything outside look like a monochromatic painting in shades of gray. A chilling breeze blew around Kaiba, but he showed no signs a reaction except for the slight fluttering of his hair. Kaiba was buried deep in thought; his own hot rage kept out the cold. Flashbacks of that morning's events raced through his mind and each time only made him angrier and angrier.

There had been an unspoken rule at Domino High about Seto Kaiba: Don't ever mess with him. The rule was established the first day of his freshmen year. A group of seniors threatened Kaiba for his wallet, knowing that he was the heir of Kaiba Corp. and expected a nice fat reward. But not only did Kaiba manage to kick all six of their asses without breaking a sweat, but the next day, all six students were expelled for various reasons. All he had to do was a little background research on each of them, and he was able to find out that each of the six boys had a very dirty history filled with vandalism and other crimes. And if he wasn't able to find a crime on their record, he created one. That was the power of money.

Kaiba considered how to punish the girl who dared to break that unspoken rule. Pulling out his laptop from his briefcase, Kaiba managed to hack into the school database in exactly 4.2 seconds. He had done it before, four years ago, after those six boys attempted to rob him, and now he was going to exact revenge in a very similar way.

Not knowing her name, Kaiba filtered the database by gender, then by height, which he estimated to be about 5'6", and then by eye color, which was brown. He gave a small smirk at how much information the school collected about each student and how well it worked out for him. The nurses' cards each student filled out at the beginning of the school year made it mandatory for each student to fill out this data in the event a student was in an emergency and needed to be physically identified. All the information was entered into the database Kaiba was now sifting through, and to top it all off, each record included a photo. After a few minutes, he finally found the girl he was looking for.

**IZUMI MAEDA**

STUDENT ID #: 1541526425

ADDRESS: 327 HAKO RD. #24

STATUS: NEW STUDENT (GRADE 12)

AGE: 18

HEIGHT: 5'6"

HAIR: BLACK

EYES: BROWN

SEX: FEMALE

ALLERGIES/ILLNESSES: N/A

- - -

The bell rang for the end of school. The thunderstorm that poured down for the majority of the day was now transformed into a light drizzle. But still, the outside looked bleak and gray as students ran to the various bus stops near campus to wait for their transportation home. A few other students, including Izumi, headed towards the motorcycle parking on the other side of the street from school. Before she could start up her old, rusty but still working bike, a familiar faced popped up in front of her.

"Hi! Remember me?" Yugi said cheerfully, relieved to finally have found the brown eyed girl from this morning. "I'm Yugi Moto, and these are my friends Joey, Tea, and Tristan." he said, as he pointed to each of his friends. "So what's your name?"

"I'm Izumi Maeda. I just moved here from Osaka, so I'm pretty new to this school," Izumi said as she smiled at the group in front of her.

"Listen…" Yugi began, as he started to blush once more, "I just wanted to thank you for what you did this morning. It wasn't necessary at all and I wish I could have stopped you from doing it because it was no big deal or anything, but I'm really sor-"

"Yugi, please, don't apologize," Izumi said. "I don't know what the big deal is about standing up to a bully, but all day long I've had people ask me if I was the girl who fought with Seto Kaiba. It was getting so bad that I just went to the library during lunch so I could avoid all the questioning. I just think everyone is taking this way out of proportion. The thing about bullies is once you stand up to them, they get so shocked that they just stop, so I'm not too worried about Kaiba."

Yugi, Tea, Joey, and Tristan all exchanged glances.

"Your theory might be right about some bullies, but those bullies aren't Seto Kaiba," Tristan said with a sigh. "He once got six senior boys expelled on his very first day of school here because they tried to steal his wallet. Not only did he kick their ass in a fight, but he also got them kicked out of the school, so he wasn't publicly humiliated or anything. Now you, on the other hand, punched him in the face."

Izumi rolled her eyes. "It was a slap, not a punch."

"Really? I heard it was an elbow," Tea said, a confused look on her face.

"I actually heard you shoved him on the ground then kicked him in the face," Joey said with a smile. "At least that's what I wish happened."

"The point is," Yugi continued, "you slapped him in front of everyone, and you left before he could even think of a comeback. Now, if I know Kaiba, and he's not very hard to predict sometimes, he's going to want revenge."

The entire group looked at Izumi with serious expressions, but Izumi didn't seem to absorb their warnings. She merely shrugged and said, "All I know is he's some big CEO of some fancy company and therefore thinks he can get away with anything. Trust me, there's not much in my life he can possibly use against me so revenge won't actually be quite that easily achieved. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get to work."

And with that, Izumi got onto her bike and rode away from the group as they each exchanged looks of fear and disappointment.

"That girl sure is naive," Tristan said, shaking his head. "I just hope she's right about having nothing to use against her, but knowing Kaiba, he'll manage to find something out of nothing. I just hope he doesn't do anything too drastic."

"Knowing him, he probably will," Joey said. And with that, the group made way towards their bus stop and towards home.

- - -

As Izumi rode towards the Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Domino, where she worked as a receptionist, she never once noticed the black sedan with dark, tinted windows following her.


	4. Calm before the Storm

**Chapter 4: Calm before the Storm**

At exactly 9 p.m., Izumi Maeda walked out the doors of the Intercontinental Hotel and got onto her motorcycle. The foggy night air made her trip home difficult, but she managed to arrive onto Hako Road with no harm.

As Izumi parked her bike outside, she glanced around cautiously to make sure no suspicious figures were lurking nearby. Hako Road was not the safest of streets, particularly at night. The entire area was known for crime, but it was a cheap area to live at and all Izumi could afford.

After being satisfied with the fact that the only other figure on the street was a calico cat walking lazily along the sidewalk, Izumi proceeded to stride up two flights of stairs to reach her apartment, number 24. She double checked behind her to make sure no one was following her before opening the door with her keys and quickly shutting it and bolting the locks behind her.

A sigh of relief escaped her lips as she finally flopped down onto her couch and flipped on the television. Izumi lived by herself; both her parents lived in the countryside trying to keep a small restaurant business alive. It earned them a small living, but not without a lot of arduous work. Thus, they were unable to follow their daughter when Izumi applied and was accepted to attend Domino High School.

Izumi threw her keys onto the coffee table. Attached to the keychain was a small, portable container of pepper spray, disguised as something that looked like a mini flashlight or a pen of some sort. Luckily enough for her, she never had the chance to use it. Channel surfing the TV set, Izumi finally settled on the local news channel, which was reporting on the damage as a result of the giant thunderstorm that morning.

"The thunderstorm knocked out power for 10 hours for residents in Kobe and Osaka, but repairmen are now working on the situation," the TV reporter announced. "It is estimated to take up to 24 hours to reestablish all of the power outages. The most costly damage that occurred today was at a Kaiba Land dueling arena located right outside of Osaka. High speed winds ripped off the roof of the arena, allowing the inside to flood and cause millions of dollars worth of damage to the Kaiba Corporation…"

The report suddenly cut to a press conference room, with Seto Kaiba on the podium. He was making an announcement:

"Damages to the arena are at an estimate of 3.5 million dollars. However, we are going to take this opportunity to introduce Kaiba Corp's newest dueling technology by building a brand new arena in place of the former one. This technology is currently in the testing stage as we run numerous examinations on it before it is released to the public. There will be better graphic renders of duel monsters for more realistic effects, as well as other upgrades I can not disclose at this time."

"Mr. Kaiba! Mr. Kaiba! Can you tell us when the rebuilding will begin?" one enthusiastic reporter questioned.

"Well, as soon as the insurance clears, we will begin—"

Izumi rolled her eyes as she changed the channel. Thoughts of Yugi and his friend's warnings began to recollect in her mind, but by now, she was as sure as ever that she had no reason to worry. Seto Kaiba obviously was a very, very busy man with an entire corporation to run. Where would he find time to plot against her?

- - -

Izumi woke up the next morning still on the couch. Trying to remember why she hadn't gotten up and into her bed, she vaguely remembered a TV special on dolphins that caused her to doze off. Forcing herself up and into the bathroom, she quickly showered and dressed for school.

The skies that morning were clear. Puffy white clouds amassed in the sky above, but no precipitation was in them. When Izumi entered the school building that morning, all seem to have calmed down. No one questioned her any longer about the incident between her and Seto Kaiba yesterday, as she breathed a sigh of relief and headed towards her first class.

At noon, Izumi, along with all the other students, began making way towards the cafeteria for lunch. While walking, someone unexpectedly tapped on her shoulder. Turning around, she found Tristan and Yugi inspecting her intently.

"Hey…." Izumi said, looking at them confusedly. Their glares kept searching her face and body to the point where it almost made her uncomfortable.

"Are you okay? Did anything happen to you yesterday?" Yugi finally stumbled out, unable to find a bruise. Izumi suddenly laughed at the cause of their actions, making her almond eyes crease and disappear into a line amusement.

"Are you guys kidding me? That's what this is about?" Izumi said, scolding them. "I'm fine. I have not been severely beaten by Kaiba nor have I been expelled."

"Wow, I thought you were a goner for sure," Joey said, suddenly joining the small group along with Tea. "Good to see ya though," he added, patting Izumi on the back. The group now continued towards the lunch room together sat at a corner table after everyone got their food. The rest of lunch was uneventful, peaceful even, as the group cracked jokes and laughed with Izumi.

Their laughter halted at a mid-chuckle when a huge spoonful of macaroni and cheese went flying and landed flat on Izumi's face. The entire cafeteria ushered to a silence as Izumi suddenly stood up, fuming, while glaring around trying to find the culprit.

Suddenly, one student yelled "FOOD FIGHT!" and that was all it took to unleash the entire cafeteria into a frenzy of war with ketchup packet bombs, pizza slices, and cartons of milk. Trying to escape the insanity that had suddenly sprouted, Izumi made her way towards the exit, hoping to clean herself off in the girl's bathroom before her next class started. Barely making it to the door, the principal suddenly walked in front of her, blocking her way. At the sight of Mr. Kashi, the tall and often described as wolf-like man, students suddenly stopped their food throwing and immediately looked down as if nothing ever happened. Expecting to be lectured at, everyone was surprised to hear Mr. Kashi suddenly bellow out "You! Maeda. Into my office, NOW!"

In the back corner, away from all of the frenzy that just occurred, Seto Kaiba sat smirking to himself.

---

Author's Note: I've actually already started ch. 5. I was going to make it into one chapter, but it was going to be waaay too long. Send me feedback for faster update please )


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